Robert Hallock gave us the full breakdown on the new Radeon HD 5870 and the 5800-series in general, but missing was the traditional entry level part, the HD 5850. The fancy card came out without the HD 5850 in tow, walking the red carpet alone.

So a week later, the HD 5850 finally shows up late to the party. Call it a considerate gesture to let the HD 5870 have its time in the spotlight. Or, call it a pretentious move on ATI’s part. Just remember, it’s not being pretentious when you’ve got the skills to back it up.

The HD 5850 has the skills.

“The Radeon HD 5850 manages to outshine the fastest single-GPU GeForce card overall while costing less, drawing less power, and producing less noise. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Nvidia cut prices in the near future, but in any case, the 5850 is hands-down the second-fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market.” — The Tech Report

The card is a shorter than the HD 5870, quiet enough, and a heck of a performer. For $260 you get performance just a notch lower than the HD 5870, but still with all the benefits of current generation DX11 hardware. The numbers are all there. If you need your daily fix of graphs and numbers, we’re partial to the Tech Report review above, along with the following.

• Hexus
• Guru3D
• PC Perspective

Few events inspire more geek euphoria than the release of new graphics technology. Of course, it helps to be at the forefront. This round, with NVIDIA lagging a bit behind, they felt that there were some tough questions TweakTown journalist Shane Baxtor should be asking in regards to AMD’s new powerhouse, the Radeon 5870.

Readers, we are not making this up; apparently NVIDIA is taking the position that PC gamers are somehow being punished by AMD for moving forward with DirectX 11 technology. NVIDIA cites the delay of DiRT 2, the title being bundled as a free download with every 5870 purchased.

Mr. Baxtor wisely takes an unbiased approach and forwards the questions to an AMD representative for rebuttal; AMD responds, saying the story would be different if NVIDIA were first. Lulz ensue. Get the full scoop at TweakTown.

If the Radeon 5870 is punishment, then AMD can bend me over and spank me. Spank me hard, AMD; I have been a very naughty boy.

After months of speculation, AMD has pressed the big red “go” button on the Radeon HD 5000 series. The reviews are pouring in–and we’ll get to those–but we want to focus on what improvements have been made to make for a superior end-user experience.

Raw horsepower

One of the big initiatives over the last few years has been the field of “stream computing.” This fledgling industry leverages the power of today’s GPUs–which are more like CPUs than ever before–to handle tasks like physics, video coding, and game AI. In essence, GPUs are now crunching the numbers that once required a CPU.

Both ATI and NVIDIA have worked to develop the stream computing initiative. Between NVIDIA’s CUDA language and ATI’s Stream Technology, both major industry players now have a solution to do stream computing. But just like the processor, heavier workloads and higher performance call for faster chips, and the HD 5000 series is no slouch in that department.

According to AMD, the new Radeon HD 5870 offers 544 double-precision GFLOPS of processing power. The FLOP stands for FLoating point Operations Per Second. A floating point operation is a basic calculation used by the CPU to process code, especially “scientific” ones like computer AI, video encoding and physics. Double-precision FLOPS ensure a high degree of accuracy in these calculations, which translates to more accurate rendering or encoding. The Radeon HD 5870 can perform 544 billion such double-precision calculations every second; in comparison the Intel Core i7 975 XE chip can only perform 70 billion of them.

(more…)

What conclusion can you draw when a GPU made with a brand new architecture appears on Newegg on the eve of large press event held by its maker? The launch is here!

A Radeon HD 5870 (”Cypress XT”) has appeared on Newegg for a preorder price of $379.99, which is right in line with the price we expected. Made by Sapphire, the card appears to be a reference design with 1GB of 1200MHz (4.8Gbps) GDDR5, an 850MHz core clock, 1600 shaders, 2 DVI ports, 1 HDMI port, and a single DisplayPort.

Readers interested in taking a peak at the SAPPHIRE 100281SR Radeon HD 5870 can pop on over to the product page for a closer look.

If reports from ATI-Forum.de can be believed, we now have official pricing, specs, and launch dates for AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs.

Radeon HD 5870

Launch date: September 22
Core Frequency: 850MHz
Memory: 1600MHz GDDR5
Shaders: 1600
Consumption: 188/27w max/idle
Price: < $400.00 USD

According to AMD benchmarks (grab your salt), the GPU is roughly equivalent to NVIDIA’s reference GeForce GTX 295 adapter which sandwiches an SLI configuration into a single card. Put another way, the HD 5870 is allegedly some fifty percent faster than the single-GPU GeForce GTX 285.

Radeon HD 5850

Launch date: September 22
Core Frequency: 725MHz
Memory: 1000MHz GDDR5
Shaders: Unknown
Consumption: 155/20w max/idle (est.)
Price: < $300.00 USD

Radeon HD 5870 X2

Unfortunately for extreme GPU enthusiasts everywhere, the least amount is known about the 5870 X2. We know for certain that the card is a dual-GPU solution consisting of twin HD 5870 cores, but rumors allege that the switch to 40nm production has allowed for both GPUs to fit on the same PCB. The same body of rumors also claim that the card will fall just shy of $600 USD and, more reasonably, say that it will be a dual-slot solution.

If indeed AMD’s performance figures regarding a single 5870 can be believed, CrossFire’s traditional scalability tells us that a 5870 X2 should deliver another 40-60% on the GTX 295. If our numbers are right, that will make the 5870 X2 fully twice as fast as the current crop of single-GPU cards.

Sadly, we know that this card will not in fact launch on September 22 with the rest of its family. The 5870 X2’s launch is set for a later date, and we’re not quite certain when that is.

For a peek at the power of AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 5000 series, the firm recently demonstrated one GPU powering six 30″ monitors for a combined resolution of 7680×3200.

AMD calls it Eyefinity, and it’s a technology that seamlessly combines multiple monitors into what AMD calls the SLS, or Single Large Surface. Rigging up the monitors into a single mighty display is often awkward if left to Windows, even Windows 7, but Radeon HD 5800 products will smoothly take care of it at the driver level.

The technology isn’t limited to just six 30″ monitors, either. AMD promises that Eyefinity will work on fewer displays just as well. It’s all a matter of personal preference, of course, but $600 in 22″ displays may be a fair sight better to some than a single larger monitor for the same price.

AMD has made a series of demo videos available to make their point. AMD’s Simon Solotko presents a more “reasonable” 3×2 array of 1920×1200 monitors in his brief presentation:

AMD also claims it has been working with Samsung to produce displays with razor-thin bezels for a more uninterrupted experience. Surely this is to remedy the fact that a shooter’s crosshair would get divided amongst several displays if more than three are used.

(more…)

Windows 7 is less than forty days away from its retail debut, and it carries the new DirectX 11 specification in tow. AMD will soon fire the first shots with a suite of cards, but what are you really going to get? Today we’ll be talking about the changes DirectX 11 brings to the table and what they mean for you.

DirectX evolved

DirectX 11 is the next iteration of the Microsoft DirectX architecture. DirectX is a collection of common application programming interfaces, or APIs, that standardize the way code for a GPU is written and executed. As a result of DirectX, and its “competitor” OpenGL, users across the globe can run any game on any GPU from any company. Whether or not that game runs well depends on the hardware’s horsepower, but DirectX has helped to avoid a standards war not unlike the one that divided Blu-ray from HD-DVD.

As the eleventh major entry into the DirectX annals it’s not quite as drastic as DirectX 10 that came before it. While DirectX 10 was all about dramatic improvements in lighting and texturing, DX11 is a more subtle movement that emphasizes GPU-accelerated apps and refined scene detail.

DirectX accomplishes its more transparent emphasis in three distinct ways.

(more…)

BFG Tech’s latest NVIDIA cards are cooled by a self-contained liquid cooling loop similar to the CoolIT Domino ALC

What the MSI N275GTX Twin Frozr OC loses in spelling accuracy, it makes up for in cool, quiet operation and performance.

It seems the long talked-about NVIDIA GT300 GPU is finally on its way into production. SemiAcurate’s Charlie Demerjian is reporting the 40nm DX11-lovin’ GDDR5 chip has taped out and will be making its way down the production lines at TSMC post haste.

Icrontic reckons it takes four or five months (without respins) from tape-out to hard product launch, which by our estimates puts the GT300 squarely in the middle of November, just in time for the Christmas rush. That’d be great for NVIDIA. Problem is, NVIDIA’s production of late hasn’t been that great. According to Charlie’s much more detailed take, it could be well into 2010 before consumers see the GT300.

It seems like NVIDIA is running scared. ATI is set to drop a new batch of video cards soon, and if this is NVIDIA’s response, it’ll come a day late and a few thousand units short.

Gigabyte slaps a MASSIVE passive heatsink on the GeForce 9800 GT and then doubles the RAM to 1GB. The result is the Gigabyte 9800GT 1GB Silent Cell.

NVIDIA revises the GTX 295 to use a single PCB now. Guru3D investigates.